Charlene Li on the problems and possibilities of social search and realtime updates.

Search engines used to leisurely index static results, but the rise of social media and real-time updates has changed the game. In this interview, Altimeter Group founder Charlene Li looks at how search will have to adapt to this new environment.

Facebook Behaviour, Multitouch Modelling, Early Ads, and Gaming Public Transportation

Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook (danah boyd) — Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. Two very interesting practices designed to maintain not just some abstract idea of “privacy” but, more important, control.

Chromarama — a game that shows you your movements and location as you swipe your Oyster Card in and out of the Tube. Points are awarded for avoiding rush hour, visiting new stations, etc. They say they want to change behaviour, but I don’t believe people ride public transportation to collect points, so they travel when they have to and so won’t change their commute times. Would love to be proven wrong, though. (via Roger Dennis)

A Prototyping HowTo, Decolumning PDFs, Real World Social Networks, and App Search

How to Prototype and Influence People (Aza Raskin) — I’m fascinated lately by prototypes, mockups, tangible artifacts, and other design tools for conveying the essence and promise of something without having to build it all. This talk nails it.

paper2ebook — Utility to re-structure research papers published in US Letter or A4 format PDF files to remove the 2 columns layout to make it suitable for viewing in an ebook reader. (via Olivier Grisel on Twitter)

The Real Life Social Network (Slideshare) — presentation from a Google ux designer starts with a typical “social networking makes you lump everyone as a friend but people don’t think that way” set of slides, but by slide 70 it’s talking about research into how people think of their friends. I’d love to see a UI for a social network that got this right. (via Matt Zimmerman on Twitter)

Search Tips, Web Parsing, DNS Blacklists, Complex Machines

Hidden Features of Google (StackExchange) — rather than Google’s list of search features, here are the features that real (sophisticated) users find useful. My new favourite: the ~ operator for approximate searching. (via Hacker News)

clive — a command line utility for extracting (or downloading) videos from Youtube and other video sharing Web sites. It was originally written to bypass the Adobe Flash requirement needed to view the hosted videos..

"Search Patterns" author Peter Morville looks at the next wave of search and reveals the one innovation that led to a watershed moment

We may think of search as static and mature, but it’s a tool in flux. Developments in mobile, augmented reality, and social graphs signal big changes ahead. In this Q&A, “Search Patterns” author Peter Morville shows how experiments at the periphery and weird ideas will shape search’s future. He also reveals the one semi-recent innovation that unlocked a watershed moment for search (it’s not what you’d expect).